SUMMERTIME?

Between Monday, April 29 and yesterday (May 8) when we returned, the temperatures at our Gilbert home ranged from a low of 29 to a high of 86. The change from cold spring to summer warmth was abrupt – and welcome. But, as everyone in the Inland Northwest knows, don’t take the electric blanket off the bed yet or put those quilts into storage. In fact, the forecast is for highs in the mid-60s next week.

On our way to the farm yesterday, we stopped in Orofino (Riverside) to pick up a card for Mike’s mother. A familiar feel washed over me as I got out of the pick-up at the store. It smelled like pine trees and river. Home. Some things never change.

While in the store, I also picked up a bottle of cheap sweet wine which I use for cooking birds. “Ma’am, you have to be 21 to buy these products,” said the stocker. I laughed but not because the comment was funny. If you’re going to compliment a woman on how young she looks, don’t call her “ma’am.”

Little Pepper, Ken’s Shorthair pup, is here with us because he has to travel this week. She’s been a good girl for us, but she pesters poor ol’ Nell unmercifully. Nellie apparently doesn’t understand that she could take care of that by booting Pepper into the next county. She’s going to have to get tough because her little cousin was born about April 30. Next month we’ll be training our own baby Shorthair.

The fields look different now, having been worked. In fact they were working today. Just look at that dust! I hung out two loads of laundry anyway.

Mike got right to work once we arrived. He had the old Dell computer re-built –new hard drive and more RAM. He got connected immediately – and so did I! CONNECTED! – Yay!! Then he serviced the lawn mower, mowed the lawn, trimmed with the weed eater, and serviced his old Yamaha dirt bike. Then he worked out so that he stays in shape.

I picked lovely large spinach leaves from the raised bed. That’s the spinach I planted last fall in hopes of an early crop. Some years it works, others it doesn’t. I made an impossible spinach pie for supper.

 

The daffodils are all gone now except for those my mother called narcissus. I’ve noticed them listed as “the Original Poet’s Daffodil.”

Haven’t seen the horses – and that’s a good thing. The ducks are gone, but this morning a pair of Canada geese flewoff the pond. We have a pheasant – Mike says there are probably two. We could hear crowing and finally saw them fly. The guy from Fish and Game says we’ll never have pheasants here, but we see a few every year, probably escapees from the hunting preserve in the canyon.

 

The pear tree is in full bloom now – 

 

And the apple trees are budding out. This picture is of the “awesome tree” in the curve of the road above our lane.

 

But it’s dry and even the breeze picks up dust off the fields. KW